XXII: Day Four.

Soran Faerber, 18
Applicant #8

He wakes up, almost predictably, to a very annoying noise.

It's something he just expects now, much as he loathes to admit it. It's a thing he very much associates with Icarus now - a particularly infuriating one, but nothing about him isn't, sort of. When he's quiet it's better, or when he's thinking. Soran isn't sure how much of that he really does.

He's not one to talk, anyway.

Icarus just seems confused, most of the time, which is a fair thing to be in this situation. He certainly doesn't talk any less as Soran has come to discover; in fact, it's almost as if this whole thing has made him talk even more, a nervous habit or something. He wishes his nervous habit was biting his own tongue, or at least not constantly contemplating Soran's very existence.

He doesn't like being scrutinized.

Icarus isn't really scrutinizing - just confused about him too, he knows. Soran's not nearly as confused about him, which is the most gratifying part of it all.

When he opens his eyes Icarus is gone, as gone as he could be. He's alone in the back-seat, a small blessing, and one of the front doors is cracked open, blowing in plumes of hot air. Even the seat is already sticky with his sweat, his hair matted to his head underneath the hat. He sits up, rubbing at his eyes. Icarus is perched on the running boards, bashing what looks to be the wrench against... his own hand?

No, not again his hand. Against the bracelet, it looks like. The screen is cracked into a hundred distinct pieces, the metal warped and caving in further with every hit against it.

He crawls into the front seat, wincing at the sudden amount of sunlight in his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?"

He leans over his shoulder, watching. It doesn't look like much.

"Looks like you're trying to take your own hand off, honestly."

"I want this thing off. I don't like them tracking me."

"Us," he corrects. "Considering I'm sitting right next to you."

"Then we'll take yours off, too."

"What if I don't want to?"

"What benefit could you possibly see to having it on?"

He shrugs, having no clue on that matter, but for some reason it seems important. Besides, he's not sure he trusts Icarus going at his wrist with a wrench, not in this century, at least. He waits for him to miss and for him to shatter some bone or other in his wrist; that would be one way to put an end to it, and an effective one at that.

"Have you tried the hammer yet?" he asks.

"One thing at a time."

He reaches into the back pocket of the driver's seat and pulls the hammer out. He squeezes out of the car next to him, feet settling into the dirt. Everything's sort of the same color, now - his boots, his clothes, his skin. Everything's just a dusty sort of brown, tinges of orange and yellow. It's not a big deal, not to him, but it has to be bugging Icarus beyond belief.

"You look like a park ranger, you know."

"That's a fucking insult to how much I spent on this outfit," Icarus complains, shielding his eyes against the sun as he looks up at him. "That's not threatening at all."

Soran is hovering above him swinging the hammer around, just a bit. He doesn't think it's that intimidating.

"It's only threatening if you think I'm going to kill you."

"Haha," Icarus says flatly. "I don't even know what a park ranger looks like."

"That's not a surprise at all." The comparison isn't all that similar - no park ranger anywhere would be wearing as much white or cream or whatever the fuck color it is that Icarus is wearing. So much for blending in. He looks like a patch of snow in the middle of the desert, and the Sentinels will have no difficult time tracking him even if they manage to get the bracelet off. You can spot him from a mile off.

Ignoring the fact that none of them saw him coming when he returned in the first place, but he was distracted.

He yanks the wrench away from him and tosses it into the front seat, grabbing at his wrist. Icarus goes still, frozen more than a statue would be, as he wedges the claw underneath the bracelet.

"Please don't do any long-lasting damage."

"Believe me, I'm trying. I'd never hear the end of it if I did."

He's done hell to this thing already. Some of the metal near the side has thinned out where it's clear he's hit it the most; he twists the claw, trying to gain some leverage. He knows it can't be comfortable, but this was Icarus' idea in the first place, and if he has to suffer even a little bit for it to work then it's his own fault.

Maybe the metal isn't heat resistant, either, but he's not sure. It seems weaker than it did way at the beginning, only three or four days ago now because he can't really remember. All he can recall is pulling at it back in that room and it not budging at all.

It is now, though. He digs the claw further into the contraption that seals it shut and one of the screws pops loose, rolling into the dirt.

Just a little more...

The bracelet pops off with a sharp noise and Icarus hisses in pain, rubbing at his wrist. He picks up the bracelet, now one wide, dangling piece. The screen is completely dark, now. Even before it was still registering something, even if it was hardly visible.

He looks down at his own bracelet.

"Another one bites the dust," he says.

"Really?"

"Yeah, you, genius," he says. "If it's not registering a heartbeat it probably assumes you're dead. Flaw in the system."

"Oh," Icarus says slowly. "Gotcha. So we should get yours off too then, hey?"

"I'm good. I don't trust you with a hammer."

"And I didn't trust you with it, either, but I still let you do it!"

"And who's fault is that?" he asks. "Get back in the car."

Icarus grumbles something under his breath. "You're the actual worst human being. You know I thought hey, maybe this won't be so bad, maybe I'll get out of the house, meet some people, maybe Estella was on the right track here—"

"Am I not considered people?" Soran asks. "Who's Estella?"

"Girlfriend," he answers. "You're considered annoying, is what you are."

"Pot, meet kettle," he says, but it's sort of funny. Icarus thinking of him as annoying is a far, far cry from just outright hating him. Although, if he's being honest with himself, he's not sure Icarus ever hated him. Soran never hated him either, to be fair. He's just a joy to rile up, and his skin was easy to get under. Now he's crawled in and found a home and God, Icarus getting rid of him is going to be a cold day in hell.

"I can't believe you have a girlfriend," he mutters, heading for the driver's seat. "How have you not annoyed her to death already?"

The door to the passenger's side slams shut, almost instantly. He glances back at Icarus, who is very dutifully ignoring him. He climbs behind the wheel, rooting around for the keys.

It all seems very normal, already.

"Had," Icarus says suddenly, looking like he regrets the words almost instantly.

"Had what?"

"Had," he says again. "Had a girlfriend."

Well, he can't say he's surprised. About the odd sense of normalcy, or the past tense.

Like he said - some things are just to be expected.

Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13

She thinks she's in a sort of in-between state right now.

Life and death is a funny comparison when it feels like you're honest to God dying. So much for wishing for a quick and painless death; if this is how she goes, it's easily the most painful physical thing she's ever experienced.

She's managed to drag herself into a little alcove not far from where she woke up, leaving a trail of smeared blood in her wake. There's something wrong with her shoulder, definitely - that slows her progress quite a bit. It doesn't feel broken, really, maybe just popped out. She really wouldn't know the difference and isn't sure it matters, anyway. It's not the side that has her whole arm, thankfully, therefore it doesn't seem nearly as important. As long as she has the power to drag herself away that's really all that matters.

So that's what she does, inch by painful inch. She can't really roll over. The best she can do is lean over onto her side and use the momentum from one arm to pull herself along.

The little alcove is nothing more than a shallow scoop in the cliff's surface, going back about ten or fifteen feet. She drags herself inside, unsure about why it feels like a better, safer place, when it really isn't. Maybe it's because someone could only approach from one direction, now. No one could creep up behind her to do anything else.

And there's no cliff for her to fall of of now, anyway.

It takes her nearly fifteen minutes to drag herself up into a sitting position against the wall, and even that hurts enough to make her stop. It feels like her stomach is about to burst open like a ripened fruit and all the contents will spill over her hands like juice.

Probably not that far off, really. She peels back her shirt, clamping down on her own lip to keep from screaming. The branch is clearly tapered towards the beginning, the bit that's protruding out from her side, but the end she's looking at now is wider and more jagged, very helpfully sticking out of her stomach. She feels bad, but not bad enough. If she got lucky, it missed her major organs. If she didn't get lucky, she's just prolonging her own death. Her and her mother would be suffering a similar fate in that respect, clinging to life when death was just beyond the horizon.

But she made it through the night, even though it didn't seem like she would. Every hour stretched on longer and longer, the blackness creeping in at the edges of her eyes. She refused to fall asleep. She knew she might not wake up if she did.

There aren't many options now. She has the matches but not the energy to collect any of the supplies for a fire. She's not sure what good it would do, anyway. She has no food to cook, or water to boil. She definitely isn't having any trouble staying warm.

There's just the map tucked into the folds of her shorts - it too is stained with blood at the frayed edges, but not enough to obscure whatever it is she's looking at.

She doesn't need a fire. In fact, she really doesn't even need a map. What she needs is help.

The people she was with have clearly abandoned her, or think her dead. She can't say she blames them on that front, because she probably would have left them too. Somewhere in the back of her mind she's still clinging to the fact that Arwen will appear at any moment to help her, make her better, tell her that it's okay to go to sleep.

It's not. Her brain is trying to lull her into that false sense of security. Her traitor brain is trying to give up.

She peels the map part, centimeter by centimeter, careful not to rip any of the edges. She said she didn't need it, but it may be the only thing that has a shot at saving her. Carnelia said if they were to go near the boundaries that they'd be killed - the only way for them to kill her, withering away on the ground like this, would be for them to come and get her. Her pulse is slow and sluggish, her brain foggy. Chances are Carnelia wouldn't come out here to do the deed herself; she'd get no joy out of killing a dying girl. But someone else might come.

It could be the worse gamble she ever makes. They could easily kill her. But for all she knows it's her only shot. The Sentinels wouldn't come out here not armed to the teeth, loaded with items that would keep them alive. Food, water, medical supplies…

She has to do it. If she's right, according to the map, she's not that far at all.

It will mean getting to her feet, something she may not be capable of at this moment in time. It's not that far, but it could take her days if she chooses to drag herself, and she certainly doesn't have that long. She needs to do something in the next day, if she even has that long. It's that or she lies here until things grow too heavy, until she falls asleep for good.

She traces a line on the map to the nearest boundary. East. Just head east, and pray she's right.

"Okay, Em," she whispers. "You got this."

She reaches for the wall behind her and begins to stand.

Sabre Hennedige, 15
Applicant #6

He's very tired.

It's not a certainty, but there's a chance he's never been this tired in his life.

Call it paranoia, maybe, but he's resorted to walking the bike because he's paranoid that he'll run out of gas. Him and Faye didn't make it all that far, and he's still got the extra canister full of the stuff, but he's nervous.

It draws attention, too, and that's the last thing he wants. For now it's better to walk. Hotter, but better.

His legs and feet feel like lead. It's a good thing his heels and toes are already calloused beyond belief from long hours of work at Cortague or he'd be in a world of pain right now, like so many of the others probably are. He stopped looking at the number on the bracelet several long hours ago as it only served as a reminder, a terrible one.

Faye's death hadn't been painless, nor had it been quick, but at least he had the mercy to end it.

It was mercy.

He's not a soldier but he's on marching orders right now, and that requires the right mindset. He can't dwell on what he did back there when it doesn't matter now, and it won't help him to keep walking either. In fact it'll only bring him down if he thinks on it too long, that he knows. It's one of the only things that seems like a guarantee at the moment.

Bit by bit there are little signs of life starting to appear in the otherwise barren desert, he's realizing slowly. A few plants here, a bird swooping overhead there. When he sees them they're small, but they're encouraging. While he sees no sign of water, certainly there will be some soon. If not he may just be forced to stop and rest, lest he get too dehydrated.

For now he seems fine, though, or maybe that's just the delusions of his brain returning from the days back at Cortague, when he would tell himself he was fine and that he could keep going even when he shouldn't have. That was the attitude that got him sent to the hospital, the one that hardly ate or slept or did anything remotely pointing towards self-care.

He's not even sure what self-care is, really.

He stares at every little plant and flower he ambles past, few as they are. He's surprised anything even grows in this rocky sort of terrain, with all the heat and so little water.

He spots it among the others only because he recognizes the picture of it - atrichoseris, his brain tells him, pulling the word back up out of where his brain had stored it. The thin, weedy looking plant that could grow out of almost anything. There are no white flowers like in the picture, but he can see the rapidly withering buds, dying off before they even get a chance to bloom.

Not everything has survived the sun's wrath.

Gravel ghost seems to be an appropriate name for the plant, though, because it doesn't look as if the stem really disappears into anything at all except the hard, crumbly rock. It doesn't even look like it should be alive.

He doesn't remember much about it, but it was edible.

Sabre hasn't eaten in four days.

Maybe a long time ago that wouldn't bug him, but something ticks in the back of his brain. He needs to eat, and it's going to be his choice. He finds himself tapping against the earrings still sunk into his intact ear, avoiding the tears on the other side. A choice of his own, just like those were.

There's a few stalks, a little patch of them. He sets the bike against one of the larger rocks and tears all the other plants away. He's not sure what they are, and he doesn't want to risk it. He meticulously picks through them, brushing away the stone and the worst of the dirt to gently pluck all of the stems out by the weeds, unearthing the little tubers along with it.

It can't be the worst thing to eat out here.

He settles down in the minuscule shade provided by both the rock and the bike and sticks a bit of the root in his mouth. A little bit of juice trickles into his mouth, sharp and bitter, but he chews through the whole bite, small as it is, and then swallows.

A little bit gets caught in his throat and he swallows over and over again, rubbing at his throat, until it goes down.

He can't waste the water.

They don't taste good, really, but nothing is going to, and at least he's confident about this. He knows enough to rely on his own abilities at least for this. Studying the plants wasn't as bad of an idea as it seemed.

If only he had a few things for a trap or two, to catch some real food. Maybe a rabbit, or even a mouse. He was never a big meat eater in the first place, but suddenly it's all he can taste.

That must be what Ria's doing, if she's still alive. He doesn't know what else he'd be expecting her to do. Feeding herself, sustaining whoever else she's with.

Doing more than he is.

He needs to stop doing that, though. He's doing something, small as it is. He's eating. He take another bite of the stem and tears some of the others off with his hands. His fingertips are sticky with it and he pops one of them into his mouth. Every little drop of liquid will count, and he'll take it.

He has water, something to eat, transportation. It's better than those that are dead.

It's certainly much better than Faye.

She would have laughed at him for the gravel ghost, though, made some sort of comment that made him want to rip out his own hair. He hates feeling that way, hates wanting to hurt himself in order to feel bad no matter how small the harm is.

No harm is small, as he's come to discover. Especially not letting go of someone like he did.

But maybe, as terrible as it sounds, he's better off for it. It's a very small maybe in a very large world, and it probably won't matter much anyway, but at least it's something. It's better than what he had a few minutes ago.

And for the first time, he leans against the rock in his little sliver of shade and something, at least, feels alright.

Arwen Paoul, 18
Applicant #1

"So," she says slowly, choosing her words carefully. "You like photography?"

It's a solid yikes on the conversation front.

It takes Jahaira a minute to answer. "What made you think that?"

It's a joke, an attempt at one. It's a pretty terrible attempt, too, but Arwen absolutely will not say that right now, no matter how much she wants to.

She can see her fiddling with the camera through the pocket of her shorts but she's made no move to do anything else with it, not the way she was doing back on the cliff.

"Nothing good to take pictures of anymore, is there?"

Jahaira shakes her head, worrying at her lip. Arwen goes back to staring at the roadless desert in front of them. They're not even going all that fast, really, because she's too afraid of running out of gas and she doesn't imagine either of them are the type to enjoy walking around in this.

"I take pictures too, you know," she offers.

"Of yourself?"

It feels like a dig and probably is, too, but she smirks. It's a sign of fire, at least, and she wasn't sure Jahaira had any of that left in her.

"Don't act like you don't take a few good ones of yourself, either."

"I'm not. I was just imagining that you only take pictures of yourself, nothing else."

"Why would I waste time taking pictures of things that don't matter?"

Jahaira shakes her head, and now there's an amused smile playing at her lips, too, although it's faint in comparison to Arwen's own. She can't ask for miracles here, especially not with someone she was never that close with to start. Her and Myra, she knows, wouldn't have been this awkward, or Jahaira and Emmi. Any other combination seems more sensible.

"How much of your personality is an act?" Jahaira asks.

"Excuse me?"

"You acted different with Emmi than you do with the rest of us. Than you did with Myra. It just seemed more sincere with her, I guess. And if you're capable of being sincere than I would imagine that the rest of you is just sort of fake. No offense, I mean. Don't kill me for saying that."

"Do you really think I'd kill you for that?"

"Well, you let Gideon kill Myra, so I'm not so sure anymore."

"I wanted him to kill her. There's a difference."

"Why?" she asks quietly in response. "There had to have been another way."

"Enlighten me, then," she offers. "Give me a better way. You can go on and defend her - doesn't matter, because she's as dead as the rest of us are going to be, no doubt. I'm not saying Emmi wasn't equally to blame in that equation, but if Myra was supposedly our leader then she did a piss poor job of it. A leader's argument is supposed to resolve whatever sort of tension created the argument in the first place. It's not supposed to end with someone dying."

"She didn't mean for that to happen—"

"And like I said, that doesn't matter," she interrupts. "Because it happened anyway."

Things, as she's come to discover, rarely just happen. Especially not out here. Someone is always planning something, even if it's hiding away somewhere even they don't know about. When you kill someone there certainly has to be a part of your brain that wants it done, whether you believe that or not. Myra had looked shocked, that much was true, but remorse could only stretch so far. It didn't stop her from doing it in the first place.

Arwen was not going to be remorseful about anything except for Emmi, who deserved better than the whole lot of them they had chosen to remain with.

She probably had deserved better than Arwen, too, but there was no point in dwelling on that either.

"I'm sorry for Emmi," Jahaira says. "I know you two were close, and I never really attempted to understand it."

"I never got you and Myra, either," she says. "Sometimes things don't have to make sense to those around it."

That was how she tried to live her life. She didn't care what those around her thought, didn't dwell in the opinions of people who ultimately mattered very little in the grand scheme of things. People like Marquis Penbrook and his father, who should have been important given his mayoral status, they didn't matter much either. What power did a mayor of a small town have, in a country like this? In a country that let this happen to them?

Someone knew about this, she's convinced. Someone sent them to their deaths.

At this point, after Emmi's fall, it's the one thing that's really keeping her going. She wants to live to find out who did it, to say the words aloud. She wants to know who did this to them.

If the Sentinels let one of them live at all.

"I'm sorry too," she says, ignoring the ugly taste the words leave in her mouth. "I know that doesn't make it any better."

"Nothing will," Jahaira murmurs. "That's okay."

No, it's not okay. Jahaira is bright, confident, resolved. Or she was, anyway. She seems to have collapsed into a shell of her former self even after only a few days. On the flip side Arwen feels like her former self has only grown stronger. It was beginning to morph into something else, something better. She almost felt like the type of girl who really deserved things - maybe that had all been Emmi's doing.

And now that she was gone, there was no point in holding onto it.

If the Sentinels wanted them to play a game, then she would play. She was good at that, one of the best - no one could say otherwise or even take that away from her.

Jahaira seemed like an obstacle, but she couldn't shove her out of the way just yet. She couldn't do this all alone.

There was a time and place for everything, after all.

Verity Alameda, 13
Applicant #3

Damas' pulse is worryingly slow.

He's in fitful sort of sleep not far from the river's edge, tucked away in a shed that Percy spent the better part of an hour clearing out before they could set him down. It's not a home, far from it, but it feels a little safe.

Something is hovering over their heads, though, the inevitability of something going wrong.

Something already is going wrong.

She's sitting on one side of him, gnawing on her knuckles to keep from screaming for... no real reason at all, really, except for the fact that it feels like her emotions are getting too big for her body. Percy's leaning up against the wall on his other side, staring blankly over her head. He's been doing that for nearly an hour, and she's not about to tell him to stop.

Yesterday had seemed good. Too good, really. She should have known it wasn't going to last.

She just can't say the word die aloud, because there's still a part of her that can't accept this as real. That would mean Percy was hallucinating when Nicator died all those days ago, that the numbers on their bracelets are only trickling down because the Sentinels are playing mind games with them. It would mean they were just wandering around out here for no real purpose at all.

That would be the kinder thing to believe.

Percy rolls his head back against the wall, eyeing the ceiling before he looks down at Damas once again. His breathing is terrible - a quiet, soft wheeze that shakes his chest and makes him clamp up against the pain even in sleep.

He's dying, Percy mouths, and she squeezes her eyes shut. If this is all just a hallucination then he's not dying, not really. She'll close her eyes and everything will be good again, like waking up from a nightmare to see the soft morning sun seeping in through the curtains of her bedroom.

She opens her eyes and there are tears in them, this she knows, but she can't manage to tear her eyes away. If what Percy says is true, then Damas doesn't deserve her looking away. Not that he ever would. He seemed like such a strange kid from a distance, him and his tarot cards and his quiet, mumbled musings, but he wasn't so bad. Her mother always told her to be less judgmental.

Being judgmental hadn't gotten them anywhere.

Verity reaches forward and takes his hand, something in her heart clenching when he squeezes back, feebly, and cracks his eyes open to look at her. He smiles.

"Hey," he croaks. "You look sad."

"I am sad," she says plainly, blinking to clear the tears from her eyes. "Sorry."

"Don't need to apologize," he murmurs, readjusting where he lies on the floor. His whole body goes tense again; she reaches for his shoulder to still him at the same time Percy grabs for his legs, holding him to the ground.

"You're making it worse."

"I don't think it can get any worse," he answers, somehow managing to make it sound like a joke, topped off with a strained laugh at the end. "It hurts bad enough already."

Damas, she already suspected, was not afraid to die, but he's afraid now. Of what, she's not sure. Maybe that's why he's still clinging to life after all this time when so many people would have let themselves go. It doesn't seem like there should be this much strength in such a small, fragile body.

"Are you religious?" she asks, desperate to change the subject.

"Not really. Are you?"

"No," she replies. "My mom sort of is - she likes to believe in something. And I like the idea that there's something after you die, I guess, a safe place you can go where nothing hurts and nothing bad ever happens."

"Me too," he murmurs. "I hope there is. I'll get to see my brother again."

She smiles even though the wetness in her eyes is betraying her. "That'll be nice, I'm sure. He'll be so glad to see you."

"I hope so. It's been so long. He probably won't even recognize me."

"He will," Percy assures him. "And even so, you'll recognize him. There won't be any mistaking that."

"My parents wouldn't let me see the body," Damas says. "He had just started working in the kitchens when Carnelia and the Titans killed the President and everyone else left in the mansion. I guess it must have sat there for days before they found it... it was probably a good thing I didn't see it, right?"

"Right," she agrees softly, nodding. She can imagine the horror herself, the image conjuring up in her mind before she can force it away. The discoloration, the bloating, the fluid.. and the smell that the people walking in must have discovered. Rotting foods and rotting people all rolled up into it.

Damas' parents made a merciful choice in keeping him away from that. Now he has nothing but the perfect memory of his brother, one where he could smile and laugh and joke with his younger brother like any sibling would.

Like her brother did.

There's no would for the two of them, anymore. A part of her stomach aches with that, her heart itself. She's never going to see him again, is she? Him and her parents, the dogs... will Willow still sit at the gate in the mornings, waiting for her to fill their breakfast bowls? Will Zeus stay up long into the night, wondering when she'll keep her promise and return?

Will Piper have any memory of her at all?

"I don't want you to cry," Damas says. "Please don't cry."

She chokes out more of an ugly sob than a laugh, but it's her best effort put forward. "Little late for that."

"Everything's going to be okay," he murmurs. "Believe that."

She wants to, more desperately than she's ever wanted anything before. It's one of her last thoughts when she falls asleep at night, one of the first things she's thinking about when she opens her eyes in the morning. It's all she wants to think about for every waking minute.

But those thoughts are destroyed at the sight of Damas and all the dried blood that's become a part of his shirt, at the hollow look that won't leave Percy's eyes ever since they found each other.

Nothing's going to be okay.

It's almost to the point where she started acting like it.

Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4

He wakes up, and he is alone.

He realizes it in pieces, almost, great big disjointed ones that don't connect immediately and don't make sense even when they finally do. It's like when a few pieces magically escape from the puzzle box and go missing - there's no solving it, then, no matter what you do.

He looks in every direction: left, and then right, sits up as much as he can manage and stares over his feet. Nothing there. He cranes his head back just in case, looking back at an odd, upside down angle that pulls at his neck.

"Jay?" he tries carefully, and lays still for a moment. No matter how quiet he remains there's no response ringing out over the rock, even though he's beyond desperate to hear it.

"Noelani?"

That's not right, he doesn't think. Noelani wasn't back when he fell asleep last night, Topher neither. Was it last night? How long has he been asleep?

There's no one around to tell him. The only thing he knows, with a dreadful certainty, is that he's still stuck in the bear trap.

His whole leg is numb, at least, which would seem terrible at any other time and more like a blessing now. The less he can feel the better, and right now he's not sure how much more pain he can handle.

But he's starting to realize, with more certainty than anything else, that he's really and truly alone. Noelani and Topher never came back, by the looks of it. Jay probably went looking for them, leaving Tarquin asleep. An innocent gesture. A kind one. Of course he wouldn't wake him up, what use would that be? It's not like Tarquin could go with him, or else he would.

They'll probably be back soon, anyway. He has no reason to worry.

He closes his eyes and reopens them close to a dozen times over the course of the next few minutes, staring up at the sky like something will change. He knows, he knows deep down, but he can't say it even to himself.

If they abandoned him...

They couldn't have.

He glances around again, searching for something in the too-bright sunlight at the sound of the pitter-patter of rocks rolling down the hillside, bouncing back and forth across the wide slope of the rock before they come to rest on the flat ground he's found a home in. A few of them inch closer and closer to his legs before they finally stop. Coming from above, not below. Noelani and Topher went down. Unless Jay grew particularly adventurous while Tarquin was sleeping, he doesn't think he would be inclined to risk his life climbing up so high.

But there's definitely something up there, a silhouette of something... a person?

That's probably not very good.

Any of his friends would have answered him. It's not them. Someone else, then. A Sentinel, or one of the other applicants. And it sounds an awful lot like they're trying to creep up on him.

And here he is, stuck in the dirt.

He clamps down on the threat of a scream in his throat and rolls over onto his side when the shadow disappears for a second, facing the other way. Fresh blood wells from his ankle, just a bit. Hopefully not enough to be noticeable. He sucks in one last, huge breath and closes his eyes, making himself go still. His bracelet is still covered, no pulse line to be shown.

Hopefully whoever this is has about as much subtlety as they do smarts. Tarquin certainly feels dead enough to play at it.

The footsteps are growing closer, louder. So much so that it's all he can hear. The wind disappears - everything goes, even the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.

There's an odd crackle and he nearly tenses.

"I know I said we had dinner, but unless you're in the mood for human flesh..."

What?

There's an even more crackly replies, he suspects, from a radio or something equally old.

"Why should I check?" the voice asks. "You didn't check the one you killed last night, did you?"

Tarquin wants to scream, again, or maybe just start sobbing. It's not a voice he recognizes - a Sentinel, maybe, but that's not what is brain is crying out. He always knew that the Sentinels wouldn't have set this kind of trap, but he was ignoring it. If it's not them, it's someone else.

Who is it?

He hears something else, something that's not quite English. A garbled representation of it, words twisted and turned around each other. It goes on for a minute before the person hovering behind him leans over him, and then there are hands on his ankle, pulling at the trap. Metal against metal.

They're getting him out of it?

This is not an illusion, the way he thought it was. Still, he doesn't get the feeling this person is getting him out because of their good graces. They think him dead, clearly. What, are they going to eat him? It sort of sounds like they're going to eat him, and he really doesn't want to be eaten alive.

There's the sharp sound of something breaking and the trap releases from his ankle. He bites down on his tongue to stop himself from howling like a wounded animal. He has to do something, before they realize. Could he get up and run? He's not so sure. Even if this person isn't the most subtle, they're almost certainly faster than him. He has no chance running.

He waits until they stand back up to crack open one eye, slowly, the one that's nearly mashed into the ground. They continue on with their jumbled conversation - good. At his feet is the two pieces of the trap, broken apart now. He can see the holes clear through his pants and into the skin of his leg, bleeding more freely now.

Surely that should be a giveaway, then? The dead don't bleed the same.

That means he has to do something now, then. He doesn't know who it is. It's not one of his fellow applicants.

Somehow that justifies it, even though he doesn't want it to.

He's never been good at not making emotional, last-second decisions.

He rolls even further, ducking towards his feet. The person above him lets out a surprised noise. Tarquin reaches forward, stretching for a piece of the trap. His fingers are saved by the fabric wrapped between them when they close around the spikes that had been sunken into his ankle. He doesn't even get a good look at whoever's behind him, and it doesn't matter.

He has two seconds before they start to react, certainly. He can't stand up.

He rolls over again, holding onto the trap for dear life. He can't stand.

That means it's only going one place, then.

He thrusts the trap outwards, towards the only place he can reach, and the pointed spikes of the trap slam into the person's thigh, spurting out blood all over his hand. They collapse backward at his push, hitting the ground with a great thud that drives the breath out of them. They're bigger than him, taller, but skinnier, almost. Dressed head to toe in pale browns and grays save for the black gas mask that's hiding their face from view.

Oh, this may be even worse than he thought.

They let out an odd, breathless little laugh, still clutching onto the radio. "Warning. This one's still alive. You can't miss him."

Curse his stupid hair.

They reach for the trap embedded in their leg, and Tarquin lets autopilot take over. He reaches backwards, fumbling for the other half of the trap, just as the person rips the other half out of their leg, sitting up. Going to finish him off, presumably.

This may be the most clear decision he's ever made, as terrifying as that sounds. As terrifying as it is.

They sit up just as he gets a hold of the trap, and he meets them in the middle when they lunge forward at him, sinking the spikes into their throat. He has to fight through layers of fabric, digging deeper and deeper until he feels blood underneath his fingers, hears the odd, choking struggle concealed beneath the mask. The trap falls out of their hand, and then the radio. He reaches for it with his free hand and drags it closer, up against his legs, where the other man can no longer reach it in his dying struggles.

He listens to the choking for a few seconds and then tears the trap back out. It doesn't take much longer than that, for the body that he's half on top of to fall still. He tears away at his wrist, pulling away the fabric until he can see the numbers across the bracelet.

The body is still, no longer fighting back. The numbers don't change.

It wasn't someone he knew.

The panic is still clawing it's way up his throat, though, as he reaches slowly for the mask, peeling it back from under their chin. He has to knock the hood back off their head, exposing a mass of very normal, dark hair as he pulls the mask up and over their face, all the way past the crown of their head. It covers nearly everything.

Still nothing he recognizes.

It's just... a person. A very normal looking, average person. Older than him, but not by a terrible amount. Dark eyes staring back at him, sightlessly.

It's no one he knows. He's not sure if that's really a good thing, or not.

More unfamiliar words come out of the radio and he flinches, nearly diving off the body in his haste to grab it. He doesn't understand a word of what they're saying, but he can almost guess. Whoever's on the other end is probably wondering what happened, after that last sentence. If they're going to figure it out, he's in some deep shit.

The deepest shit, really.

He's dressed in light, layered clothing, perfect from hiding away from the sun, and boots good for traversing the desert. He even has gloves, a hood to pull up, a backpack crushed underneath the weight of his body. Tarquin can feel the knives digging into the underside of his thighs where he's still perched over-top of him, long, hunting ones. There's something else hidden underneath him, too, the long curve of a bow and arrows attempting to hide away in the mass of his hair.

He's armed. And if Tarquin were to bet, he has supplies in that bag. More than what he's wearing.

And he also has friends who are probably going to rip Tarquin's throat out, when they find out what he's done.

He very slowly lifts himself up, sliding to the ground next to the body. None of his friends are here - that's almost the worst part, if not for the corpse that just died at his hands. It was no one he knew, but what does that matter, really, if he's going to be next? Did he just kill someone for nothing?

No. No, it can't be for nothing.

He takes the mask, and then the radio. Pulls all the knives from his belt and tucks them away, shoving him over inch by inch until he can wrestle the bow off his shoulder and then the quiver full of arrows. That's not going to be good enough. He needs everything - the clothes, the bag, everything he has on him.

God, this is going to be ugly.

He shoves his hands under himself and then grasps at a rock next to him, holding himself steady as he rises to his feet on only one leg, wobbling uncertainly. Everything spins, his head throbbing. The lack of food and water is going to be worse now that he's upright, but maybe whatever's in the bag can solve that. He sets his foot down, tears welling in his eyes at the fiery pain that licks up his ankle like a wildfire. It's fine. He can walk. He'll just act like nothing's wrong.

Because nothing is, nothing at all.

He takes the bag, shoulders the bow and the quiver, and then reaches for the body itself. Standing up like this he can see the mine entrance that Jay pointed out, one hand curled around the fabric at the man's shoulder, ready to pull. He's not even that heavy.

First he flicks the switch on the radio off. He can use that later. Right now he needs to sort this out, and he probably needs to disappear, before someone finds him.

It's just like playing a role. Putting on a costume and going out on stage, and you're someone else.

This man is dead, and he killed him.

In Tarquin's mind, racing and muddled with fear and panic, he won't miss any of it.

I feel like this is probably about the time I started fucking the numbers up with people running around unaccounted for, so if you notice any discrepancies, I apologize for that. I'm not very good at counting. Or math in general.

The poll results are pretty funny, thus far, but I'll be leaving them up for a bit in case anyone else wants to put their two cents in.

Until next time.